Nov 30, 2013

Jean Pain was a French innovator who lived in southern France from 1930 until his passing in 1981. He was able to create a compost-based energy production system that was capable of producing 100% of his energy needs.

Using compost alone, Jean was able to heat water to 140°F. He used this water for washing, cooking and heating his home. We aren't talking about a small amount of water either. His system was able to heat water at a rate of 4 L per minute; or almost 1 gallon per minute.

Many of our modern hot water heaters can't even boast figures that impressive.

In addition to heating water using compost, Jean also distilled methane to run a generator, a stove, and fuel his vehicle.

The work he did is still viable today. Sometimes known as Jean Pain Composting or the Jean Pain Method, we can learn a lot from the work of this Frenchman about resiliency.

Interestingly enough, just about all of Jean's work is in French. There are English translations available around the Internet, however, so with a little bit of research we can take advantage of Mr. Pain's successes as one of the early innovators of modern resiliency.

If you are interested in learning more about the work of Jean Pain, check out the book entitled "Another Kind of Garden." It is translated from the original French so it is a little hard to read, but the information is extremely interesting and we could all learn a thing or two from his work.

How Does it Work?

It may seem unbelievable that a simple compost pile filled with anaerobic bacteria could heat water to temperatures hot enough to scald skin. It is, however, entirely possible and easily replicated at home.

Pilus Energy has developed an innovative technology which cleans wastewater while generating electricity. Bacterial robots (Bactobots) consume pollutants from wastewater and create energy.

900 billion gallons of untreated wastewater are released into America's rivers and lakes each year. The U.S. needs to invest $3.6 trillion over the next decade to repair and replace the aging water infrastructure. Pilus Energy's system treats wastewater, making it safe to discharge, while at the same time providing a source of renewable energy.

Pilus Energy relies on bacterial robots (Bactobots) to digest pollutants in the wastewater. During metabolism, the bactobots generate electricity, which is captured by an electrogenic bioreactor platform. The bactobots also expel gases and chemicals, which are also used to generate electricity.

Business Insider: Photovoltaic plants will add about 36.7 gigawatts globally in 2013, a 20% jump from last year. Wind will only add 35.5 gigawatts, down from 25% in 2012.

"The dramatic cost reductions in photovoltaics, combined with new incentive regimes in Japan and China, are making possible further, strong growth in volumes," said Jenny Chase, BNEF's head of solar analysis.

Meanwhile in the U.S., the amount of new solar capacity installed in 2013 through October — 2,528 megawatts — is nearly double the amount installed for wind, at 1,027 megawatts, for the same period, according to FERC.

And in terms of net generation, solar's 6,407 megawatt hours through September is 92% higher than it was through September 2012. For wind, the figure is just 22% higher, according to the EIA, though at 123,978 megawatt hours the overall amount of power generated by wind remains several orders of magnitude larger than solar. Monthly solar net generation growth in 2013 averaged 17% through September; for wind, monthly average growth was 0%. Here's the chart:

"One Chinese estimate puts the oil stores in the South China waters at 213 billion barrels, an amount that would exceed the proved reserves of every country except Venezuela (296.5 billion barrels at the end of 2011) and Saudi Arabia (265.4 billion barrels). That's about ten times higher than a U.S. Geological Survey estimate from the mid-1990s—but even that lower figure puts the South China Sea's oil potential at four or five times that of the Gulf of Mexico." http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/energy/2012/10/121026-east-china-sea-dispute/

Nov 29, 2013

A newstudy has discovered that 48% of the nation's 50 million public school students are in poverty, as measured by whether they qualify for free or reduced-priced lunches. In 17 states, the majority of schoolchildren are poor. Poverty rates are led by Mississippi, where 71% of children are in poverty... Please continue readingby Lisa Wade, published on Sociological Images // visit site

Gregor Macdonald: When neither the private nor public sector is willing to invest in the future, it seems appropriate to ask, what happened to the future? Have corporations along with governments figured out that a return to slow growth does not necessary equal a return to normal growth? Why invest in new infrastructure, new workforces, new office space, equipment, highways, or even rail, when the demand necessary to provide a return on this investment may never materialize?

Many sectors in Western economies remain in oversupply or overcapacity. There is a surplus of labor and a surplus of office and industrial real estate, as well as airports, highways, and suburbs that are succumbing to a permanent decrease in throughput and traffic. Perhaps the private sector is not so unwise. Collectively, through its failure to invest, it is making a de facto forecast: No normal recovery is coming.

ENN...The environmental scientists, experts in air quality, atmospheric chemistry, and ecology, have been studying the fate of nitrogen-based compounds that are blown into natural areas from power plants, automobile exhaust, and—increasingly—industrial agriculture. Nitrogen that finds its way into natural ecosystems can disrupt the cycling of nutrients in soil, promote algal overgrowth and lower the pH of water in aquatic environments, and ultimately decrease the number of species that can survive.

"The vast majority, 85 percent, of nitrogen deposition originates with human activities," explains principal investigator Daniel J. Jacob, Vasco McCoy Family Professor of Atmospheric Chemistry and Environmental Engineering at the Harvard School of Engineering and Applied Sciences (SEAS). "It is fully within our power as a nation to reduce our impact."

Existing air quality regulations and trends in clean energy technology are expected to reduce the amount of harmful nitrogen oxides (NOx) emitted by coal plants and cars over time. However, no government regulations currently limit the amount of ammonia (NH3) that enters the atmosphere through agricultural fertilization or manure from animal husbandry, which are now responsible for one-third of the anthropogenic nitrogen carried on air currents and deposited on land.

"Ammonia's pretty volatile," says Jacob. "When we apply fertilizer in the United States, only about 10 percent of the nitrogen makes it into the food. All the rest escapes, and most of it escapes through the atmosphere."

Nov 27, 2013

NOGALES, Ariz.--- Toxic water flowing from Mexico into the United States is the cause of a different kind of border war.

By the laws of nature, and international treaty, water flows north from Nogales, Sonora, into Nogales, Arizona.

Rain water carries toxins from Mexican sewage and also industrial waste. Roughly 80 factories south of the border produce clothing, metals, plastics, and more. Waste from those plants seeps into the environment, and rains bring it to Arizona.

A sewer system and wash are designed to bring the wastewater to a treatment facility near Nogales. The treated water is released into the Santa Cruz River, which can flow as far north as Pinal County.

The system is old, and falling apart. The concrete wash walls are crumbling, as are the underground pipes. Strong storms overwhelm the system, and untreated pollutants from Mexico flood into Arizona.

"It'll affect every well from here to Casa Grande," warns Nogales Mayor Arturo Garino. He's been sounding the alarm about the issue for years.

U.S. Energy Secretary Ernest Moniz has reported that the final shipment of low enriched uranium (LEU) derived from Russian weapons-origin highly enriched uranium (HEU) under the 1993 U.S.-Russia HEU Purchase Agreement, commonly known as the Megatons to Megawatts Program has taken place.

Under the agreement, Russia downblended 500 metric tons of HEU, equivalent to 20,000 nuclear warheads, into LEU. The resulting LEU has been delivered to the United States, fabricated into nuclear fuel, and used in nuclear power plants to generate nearly ten percent of all US electricity for the past fifteen years, roughly half of all commercial nuclear energy produced domestically during that time.

Deliveries of LEU produced from Russian-origin HEU under the landmark nuclear non-proliferation programme are complete and 9,630 type-30B cylinders of LEU from Russian HEU will have been delivered.

"For two decades, one in ten light bulbs in America has been powered by nuclear material from Russian nuclear warheads. The 1993 United States-Russian Federation Highly Enriched Uranium Purchase Agreement has proven to be one of the most successful nuclear non-proliferation partnerships ever undertaken," said Secretary Moniz. "The completion of this 'swords to ploughshares' program represents a major victory both for the United States and Russia."

Exposure to certain pesticides, including rotenone and paraquat, has been associated with a higher incidence of Parkinson's disease in population studies. But how did scientists come to think of a link between Parkinson's disease and pesticides in the first place? The answer involves the 1980s drug underworld, where criminals were synthesizing modified versions of illegal drugs such as heroin to stay one step ahead of the law. One molecule in some designer heroin cocktails, 1-methyl-4-phenyl-1,2,3,6-tetrahydropyridine (MPTP), breaks down in the human body into 1-methyl-4-phenylpyridinium (MPP+), a nerve cell killer. Heroin addicts exposed to this molecule got Parkinson's-like symptoms. As for the connection to pesticides, MPP+ is a weed killer that was used in the 70s. It also closely resembles the structure of the pesticide paraquat. The saga, therefore, put scientists on high alert to the possibility that pesticides might play a role in developing Parkinson's.

.... in the last 10 years,electricity costs have gone up 42%. I noticed, did you? While not all the blame can be put on Obama (Bush was enabling the EPA as well), a great deal of it can and who can forget his famous quote on coal and energy in general:

The price of electricity hit a record for the month of October, according to data released Wednesday by the Bureau of Labor Statistics. That made October the eleventh straight month when the average price of electricity hit or matched the record level for that month.

The average price of electricity in October was 13.2 cents per kilowatt hour (KWH), up from 12.8 cents per KWH in October 2012—and up from 9.3 cents per KWH in October 2003.

Americans now pay 42 percent more for electricity than they did a decade ago.

ENN - The United States has lost approximately 80,000 acres of coastal wetlands between 2004 and 2009 according to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. Much of this loss is blamed on development and has occurred in freshwater regions. Additionally, more than 70% of the loss is from the Gulf of Mexico. According to the EPA wetland loss in the eastern U.S. is happening at a rate double that of what is being restored.

Nov 26, 2013

BEIJING -- China's president on Sunday visited hospitalized victims of deadly explosions that ripped through residential and commercial roads from a ruptured pipeline owned by the country's largest oil refiner.

The official death toll from the blasts rose to 52 earlier in the day after rescuers found more bodies in the aftermath of Friday's industrial accident in eastern China. Eleven people were still missing, according to the information office of the government of the port city of Qingdao.

Rescue efforts were continuing, the information office said. It said earlier that 136 people had been injured, 10 of whom were in critical condition.

Pew - Over the past 50 years, the United States has yet more animals than ever are being raised, slaughtered, and processed. The modern operations that raise most animals for food today are far larger than those of years ago, and many specialize in only one type of livestock or even one stage of an animal's life. The very largest of these now account for a huge proportion of production. In 2002, for example, the average U.S. hog farm produced 2,255 animals, but most of the hogs produced in the country came from operations more than 10 times that large. In the same year, most of the cows sold in the United States came from operations selling more than 34,000 head, and most of the broiler chickens came from operations that produced more than 500,000 birds. -

SUMMARY: EPA is approving a request submitted by the Illinois Environmental Protection Agency (Illinois EPA) on July 3, 2013, to revise the Illinois state implementation plan (SIP). The submission amends the Illinois Administrative Code (IAC) by updating the definition of "Volatile organic material (VOM) or Volatile organic compound (VOC)" to add trans-1,3,3,3-tetra-flouropropene (HFO-1234ze) to the list of compounds excluded from the definition of VOM or VOC. This revision is based on EPA's 2012 rulemaking which added HFO-1234ze to the list of chemical compounds that are excluded from the Federal definition of VOC because of their negligible contribution to the formation of tropospheric ozone.

Please see & NOTE this is a Pre-release — Final Rule from Environmental Protection Agency

Nov 24, 2013

2011: Google announces an end to RE less than C, citing cost drops in solar PV

After four years of experimentation in CSP and EGS, Google finally decided to end its ambitious RE less than C initiative. Some in the press wrongly reported that Google had "abandoned" renewable energy. Instead, the company cited the steady cost drops in photovoltaics, saying that it would rather focus on project financing rather than R&D.

Shortly after announcing the end to RE less than C, Google dropped more than $350 million into funds for solar service companies Clean Power Finance and SolarCity. And in the subsequent years, it has scaled its project financing from $580 million to more than $1 billion.

Spring 2010 to present: Google expands its investment bonanza

Since arming itself with the ability to act like a utility and phasing out its R&D efforts, Google has supported fourteen projects worth more than 2 gigawatts of capacity.

GTM's Herman Trabish assembled a list of some of the top plays Google made in one year alone:

$75 million in a fund operated by Clean Power Finance (CPF) that will finance 3,000 rooftop solar home installations

$280 million in a fund operated by SolarCity that will extend that company's lease program to some 8,000 new system owners

$168 million in BrightSource Energy's Mojave Desert utility-scale CSP solar power tower facility that will supply 392 megawatts of electricity to California power suppliers SCE and PG&E (following an initial $10 million investment in the company itself)

37.5 percent early equity stake in the Atlantic Wind Connection, a transmission backbone that will ultimately cost approximately $5 billion and deliver 7,000 megawatts of offshore wind-generated electricity from a 2,000-megawatt-capacity, high-voltage, direct-current, 250-mile transmission path between southern Virginia and northern New Jersey

$157 million in 270 megawatts of wind being built at the Alta Wind Center in Southern California's Tehachapi Mountains

$100 million in the 845-megawatt Shepherd's Flat project in Oregon, the biggest on-land wind farm in the world

$38.8 million in two North Dakota wind farms with a total capacity of 169.5 megawatts, the first production tax credit deal done after the 2008 economic crash

€3.5 million (~$5 million) for 49 percent of an 18.65-megawatt PV solar installation in Brandenburg, Germany

Costa Rica hopes that the additional electricity generated by steam from the volcanic area will help the country reach its goal of generating 95 percent of its electricity with renewable resources by 2014. ...

The first of the proposed plants, Pailas II, will have an electrical generation capacity of 55 megawatts and will cost more than $333 million to build, according to a statement from Casa Presidencial. The costa Rican Electricity Institute, or ICE, will construct two other 50-MW power plants, Borinquen I and II, 40 kilometers away from the Pailas geothermal plants. "This is 165 MW of reliable [electricity generation]; that is to say, they will operate 24 hours a day, 365 days a year. This is clean, renewable and reliable energy, as reliable as any conventional thermal electrical power plant," said ICE Executive President Teofilo de la Torre.

Only about half of the prescription drugs and other newly emerging contaminants in sewage are removed by treatment plants.

That's the finding of a new report by the International Joint Commission, a consortium of officials from the United States and Canada who study the Great Lakes.

The impact of most of these "chemicals of emerging concern" on the health of people and aquatic life remains unclear. Nevertheless, the commission report concludes that better water treatment is needed.

"The compounds show up in low levels – parts per billion or parts per trillion – but aquatic life and humans aren't exposed to just one at a time, but a whole mix," said Antonette Arvai, physical scientist at the International Joint Commission and the lead author of the study. "We need to find which of these chemicals might hurt us."

More than 1,400 wastewater treatment plants in the United States and Canada discharge 4.8 billion gallons of treated effluent into the Great Lakes basin every day, according to the study.

The scientists reviewed 10 years of data from wastewater treatment plants worldwide to see how well they removed 42 compounds that are increasingly showing up in the Great Lakes.

Energy efficient houses are often thought to be a promising way to reduce our environmental footprint by using less energy and producing fewer greenhouse gas emissions. Yet, surprisingly, if you consider the whole life cycle of a house, it turns out that sometimes a new home designed to save energy can end up using more than an average house.

Our study, published in the December edition of the journalApplied Energy, found that current building regulations are failing to adequately address the broad scope of energy use associated with buildings. We need to start thinking about building materials, size, location and lifestyles - not just heating and cooling.

Rating Australian homes

In Australia, the star-rating scheme measures the energy efficiency of residential buildings on a scale of 1 to 10 stars, with 10 being extremely energy efficient and requiring very little energy for heating and cooling.

The higher the star-rating, the more materials are typically required - such as for insulation, glazing, efficient window frames - in order to reduce heating and cooling energy demand. All these materials require energy to produce, known as their embodied energy.

In a climate such as Melbourne's, a 6-star rated home would require 114 megajoules of energy per square metre each year for heating and cooling, which works out to be 27,360 megajoules a year for a typical new 240m² house. That's two-thirds less energy for heating and cooling than an average Melbourne home.

If you go even further and achieve an 8-star rating, that falls to 54 megajoules per square metre - or 12,960 megajoules a year for a 240m² house. That's a good enough result to earn a"passive house" certification in Europe.

However, we found that the additional embodied energy of the materials needed to achieve this improved performance would equate to at least 500,000 to 800,000 megajoules of energy for a new 240m² house, even before you moved in. That's equivalent to the energy you would need to heat and cool the home for 15 to 25 years.

Counting more than energy bills

A house is not just a space to heat or cool: it's an organised assembly of numerous materials to produce indoor and outdoor spaces. Within these spaces, thermal comfort is required and energy is used to maintain it. Energy is also needed for lighting, appliances, cooking and hot water.

At a larger scale, buildings form neighbourhoods, which in turn form cities. The type and layout of those buildings greatly influence travel distances and the associated energy needed for transport.

Most new houses are built in the outer suburbs of our major cities, often with a lack of reliable public transport services, forcing householders to rely on cars for travelling long distances. This leads to a significant demand for transport-related energy, particularly petrol, especially compared to inner-city households.

The total operational, embodied and transport energy associated with a super insulated house near Brussels, Belgium (equivalent to an 8 to 9-star house in Australia) was compared to the same house built to minimum requirements (6-star equivalent) and an apartment in the city (5-star equivalent).

Four and two occupants were assumed to live in each of the houses and the city apartment, respectively. The occupants of both houses in the suburbs rely on cars for their mobility, while those in the city travel by trams, trains and car.

Figure 1 compares the total energy use of the three buildings over 50 years, per person.

Figure 1: Total energy demand over 50 years for suburban low-energy and standard houses and a city apartment in Brussels, Belgium, by use

Click to enlarge

As can be seen above, the total energy use of the passive house (8 to 9-star equivalent) is only marginally less than that of the standard house, and 1.7 times higher than the city apartment.

Nov 23, 2013

The Ecologist: A new study finds that radioactive Iodine from Fukushima has caused a significant increase in hypothyroidism among babies in California, 5,000 miles across the Pacific Ocean.

A new study of the effects of tiny quantities of radioactive fallout from Fukushima on the health of babies born in California shows a significant excess of hypothyroidism caused by the radioactive contamination travelling 5,000 miles across the Pacific. The article will be published next week in the peer-reviewed journal Open Journal of Pediatrics.

Congenital hypothyroidism is a rare but serious condition normally affecting about one child in 2,000, and one that demands clinical intervention - the growth of children suffering from the condition is affected if they are left untreated. All babies born in California are monitored at birth for Thyroid Stimulating Hormone (TSH) levels in blood, since high levels indicate hypothyroidism.

Joe Mangano and Janette Sherman of the Radiation and Public Health Project in New York, and Christopher Busby, guest researcher at Jacobs University, Bremen, examined congenital hypothyroidism (CH) rates in newborns using data obtained from the State of California over the period of the Fukushima explosions.

Their results are published in their paper Changes in confirmed plus borderline cases of congenital hypothyroidism in California as a function of environmental fallout from the Fukushima nuclear meltdown. The researchers compared data for babies exposed to radioactive Iodine-131 and born between March 17th and Dec 31st 2011 with unexposed babies born in 2011 before the exposures plus those born in 2012.

Confirmed cases of hypothyroidism, defined as those with TSH level greater than 29 units increased by 21% in the group of babies that were exposed to excess radioactive Iodine in the womb [*]. The same group of children had a 27% increase in 'borderline cases' [**].

Nov 22, 2013

We find that three factors—(1) population growth, (2) the growth in the proportion of women insured for disability, and (3) the movement of the large baby boom generation into disability-prone ages—explain 90 percent of the growth in new disabled-worker entitlements over the 36-year subperiod (1972–2008). The remaining 10 percent is the part attributable to the disability "incidence rate." Looking at the two subperiods (1972–1990 and 1990–2008), unadjusted measures appear to show faster growth in the incidence rate in the later period than in the earlier one. This apparent speedup disappears once we account for the changing demographic structure of the insured population. Although the adjusted growth in the incidence rate accounts for 17 percent of the growth in disability entitlements in the earlier subperiod, it accounts for only 6 percent of the growth in the more recent half. Demographic factors explain the remaining 94 percent of growth over the 1990–2008 period.

Approximately 8 out of every 1,000 newborns have congenial heart defects – abnormalities in the heart's structure that happen due to incomplete or irregular development of the fetus' heart during the first stages of the mother's pregnancy. While some are known to be associated with genetic disorders, the cause of most of these heart defects is unknown. However, according to research presented at the American Heart Association's Scientific Sessions 2013, heart defects in children may be associated with their mothers' exposure to specific mixtures of environmental toxins during pregnancy. Researchers examined patterns of congenital heart defects incidence and presence of environmental toxicants in Alberta, Canada. The ongoing research seeks to determine if pregnant women's proximity to organic compounds and metals emitted in the air impacts the risk of heart defects in their children.

Please continue reading published on ENN Original news - ENN // visit site

ThinkProgress: Think Progress - "North America's Dead Sea" is the nickname Lake Erie was given in the 1960s. Nearly 64 million pounds of phosphorus flowed into the lake each year from factories, sewer systems, fertilized farms and lawns. The nutrient pollution caused massive algal blooms which were often not only toxic themselves, but caused enormous dead zones in the lake, killing off fish and other marine life. The U.S. and Canada spent over $8 million in the 70s and 80s to upgrade lakeside sewage plants and dramatically cut phosphates in household detergents. And gradually, the lake began to come back to life, fish populations recovered and the lake's $10 billion tourism industry rebounded.

Now, scientists worry, Lake Erie is dying again. Gradually increasing levels of phosphorus runoff over the years are the primary culprit, but researchers warn that climate change is also playing its part — making a bad situation much worse.

In 2011, close to 20 percent of Lake Erie was covered in a layer of pea soup colored, scummy algal bloom that despoiled beaches all summer long and clogged boat motors well into the fall. The algae was microcystis, a form of blue-green algae that produces liver toxins, which cause numbness, nausea, vomiting, and even liver failure, especially in pets. The bloom was blamed on torrential spring rains that hit the area fast and hard, breaking local precipitation records and practically power-washing fertilizer off nearby corn and soybean fields and into the lake.

Nov 21, 2013

Bloomberg: Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago President Charles Evans, a voter on policy this year, said the Fed may buy a total of $1.5 trillion in bonds in a program that started in January 2013 to ensure steady employment gains.

"Given the current conditions, I won't be surprised if it is $1.5 trillion," Evans, a consistent supporter of record stimulus, said in a speech today in Chicago. "It could be a little more than that."

Nov 20, 2013

New Delhi: Amid debate over safety of nuclear installations, a new order has been issued to operators to report "extraordinary nuclear events", including radiation and leakage of radioactive material, to the atomic regulator within 24 hours of the incident.

Seeking to remove any confusion, the order makes it clear that the reporting of the extraordinary nuclear events will be in addition to, "and in no way in derogation of the existing regulatory mechanism" of reporting of events to the regulator.

According to a latest order of the Atomic Energy Regulatory Board (AERB), operator of the nuclear installation will report extraordinary nuclear event (ENE) either in the installation or during transportation of radioactive material to the regulator within 24 hours of the occurrence.

The AERB order also stipulates that a detailed report of the nuclear incident should be conveyed to the regulator within 10 days.

The order has been issued under various provisions of the Civil Liability for Nuclear Damage Act, 2010 and Civil Liability for Nuclear Damage rules, 2011.

The ENEs described in the order include any incident resulting in stack release of radioactivity 500 times or more of the annual release limit prescribed in technical specifications for operation of the plant.

The operator will also have to inform about incidents where in one or more person off site (away from the facility) "were, could have been, or might be" exposed to radiation or to radioactive material.

Also, any incident which leads to injury or death of a person off site due to exposure to ionizing radiation emanating from a nuclear installation will also have to reported.

The operators have also been ordered to report any event leading to a surface contamination of at least a total of 100 square meters of offsite property due to release of radioactive material from nuclear installation.

Referring to incidents outside the installation, the AERB order stipulates that the regulator will be informed if in the course of transportation by road, air or water, a person is injured or dies due to exposure to ionizing radiation emanating from the release of nuclear material.

The order makes it clear that Environmental Survey Laboratory of each nuclear installation will regularly assess the environmental radiological conditions within a radius of 30 km around the nuclear installation and promptly report to the Atomic Energy Regulatory Board any "abnormal" environmental radiological condition.

There are already plenty of gadgets that allow people to charge their mobile devices while off the grid. Most of those products utilize solar power, while a few have gone the thermoelectric route. The HydroBee, however, generates electricity using the power of flowing water – think of it as a portable hydroelectric station. .. Continue Reading HydroBee wants to be your personal hydroelectric generator

Nov 19, 2013

Yale Environment 360: A shortage of "rare earth" metals, used in everything from electric car batteries to solar panels to wind turbines, is hampering the growth of renewable energy technologies. Researchers are now working to find alternatives to these critical elements or better ways to recycle them.

by nicola jones: With the global push to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, it's ironic that several energy- or resource-saving technologies aren't being used to the fullest simply because we don't have enough raw materials to make them.

For example, says Alex King, director of the new Critical Materials Institute, every wind farm has a few turbines standing idle because their fragile gearboxes have broken down. They can be fixed, of course, but that takes time – and meanwhile wind power isn't being gathered. Now you can make a more reliable wind turbine that doesn't need a gearbox at all, King points out, but you need a truckload of so-called "rare earth" metals to do

Haruyoshi Yamaguchi/Bloomberg

These bits of critical elements are bound for recycling at a Mitsubishi subsidiary in Japan.

it, and there simply isn't the supply. Likewise, we could all be using next-generation fluorescent light bulbs that are twice as efficient as the current standard. But when the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) tried to make that switch in 2009, companies like General Electric cried foul: they wouldn't be able to get hold of enough rare earths to make the new bulbs.

The move toward new and better technologies — from smart phones to electric cars — means an ever-increasing demand for exotic metals that are scarce thanks to both geology and politics. Thin, cheap solar panels need tellurium, which makes up a scant 0.0000001 percent of the earth's crust, making it three times rarer than gold. High-performance batteries need lithium, which is only easily extracted from briny pools in the Andes.

In 2011, the average price of 'rare earth' metals shot up by as much as 750 percent.

Platinum, needed as a catalyst in fuel cells that turn hydrogen into energy, comes almost exclusively from South Africa.

Researchers and industry workers alike woke with a shock to the problems caused by these dodgy supply chains in 2011, when the average price of "rare earths" — including terbium and europium, used in fluorescent bulbs; and neodymium, used in the powerful magnets that help to drive wind turbines and electric engines — shot up by as much as 750 percent in a year. The problem was that China, which controlled 97 percent of global rare earth production, had clamped down on trade. A solution was brokered and the price shock faded, but the threat of future supply problems for rare earths and other so-called "critical elements" still looms.

EPA -The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency recently awarded over $30 million as part of a yearly program that provides grants to Guam, the Commonwealth of Northern Mariana Islands and American Samoa for use in continuing environmental protection work and for improvements to drinking water and wastewater infrastructure.

"EPA's funding enables the islands to advance their goals in the pursuit of clean air, water and land," said Jared Blumenfeld, Regional Administrator for the Pacific Southwest. "As one example, the investment made in leak detection projects in all three territories has dramatically reduced drinking water losses, and saved over $1 million in energy costs."

Guam EPA will be receiving $3.2 million, CNMI DEQ will be receiving $1.7 million, and the American Samoa EPA $1.8 million to support the operations of each environmental agency. The work done by the agencies include inspections, monitoring the safety of beaches and drinking water, permit writing, enforcement and other facets of their environmental protection programs.

Additionally, EPA provides drinking water and wastewater construction grants to improve the water supplies in each of the territories. The Guam Waterworks Authority will be receiving $8.2 million, CNMI's Commonwealth Utilities Corp. will be receiving $6.9 million, and the American Samoa Power Authority $8.3 million.

Accomplishment highlights from previous funding include:

- Improvements to the drinking water system in all three territories, including improved chlorination in Guam, increased water storage in CNMI, and an ongoing extension of the central system in American Samoa to remote villages.

- EPA funding has contributed to the increased drinking water availability in Saipan, where 95% of the population now has access to 24-hour water (up from 75% in 2009).

- Improvements to the wastewater collection and treatment systems in all three territories, including rehabilitation of a treatment plant in Saipan, improvements to the collection infrastructure in Guam, and ongoing extension of sewer lines in American Samoa.

- EPA has funded the replacement of older wastewater pumps with newer energy efficient pumps and controls, saving the utilities hundreds of thousands of dollars in power bills in all three territories.

Nov 18, 2013

...a study on antibiotic prescription rates across the United States that was recently published in the New England Journal of Medicine. The researchers found a surprisingly wide variationamong the states, and the rates—expressed in terms of prescriptions per 1,000 people—seemed to follow a geographical pattern: The Southeast had the highest rates, while the West's were lower. West Virginia had the most prescriptions, and Alaska had the fewest. The rest of the country fell somewhere in between. Here's a map of the findings:

As I thought more about the map, I wondered whether the prescription rates followed any demographic patterns. Lauri Hicks, a lead author of the study and a medical epidemiologist at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, told me that her team had initially expected to find certain correlations—for example, higher prescription rates in states with large elderly populations. But that didn't turn out to be the case. Take Florida, which has a sizeable elderly population, but only an average antibiotic prescription rate.

Yet Hicks' team did find one very strong correlation: The states with higher rates of antibiotic use also tended to have higher obesity rates. Take a look at this map of obesity rates by state and see how it reflects the antibiotics map above:

When we mashed up the data behind these maps, we confirmed the strong correlation between obesity and antibiotic prescription rates (we got an r of 0.74, for the statistically inclined). We also found a correlation between the states' median household incomes and antibiotic prescription rates: States with below-average median incomes tend to have higher antibiotic prescription rates. This makes sense, considering that high obesity rates correlate with low income levels. (You can see the data sets for antibiotic prescription rate, obesity, and median household income level here.)

Hicks and her team can't yet explain the connection between obesity and high rates of antibiotic prescription. "There might be reasons that more obese people need antibiotics," she says. "But it also could be that antibiotic use is leading to obesity."

The Independent: ..Writing in The Lancet, experts, including England's chief medical officer, Dame Sally Davies, warn that death rates from bacterial infections "might return to those of the early 20th century". They write: "Rarely has modern medicine faced such a grave threat. Without antibiotics, treatments from minor surgery to major transplants could become impossible, and health-care costs are likely to spiral as we resort to newer, more expensive antibiotics and sustain longer hospital admissions."

Strategies to combat the rise in resistance include cutting the amount of antibiotics prescribed, improving hospital hygiene and incentivising the pharmaceutical industry to work on novel antibiotics and antibiotic alternatives.

However, a leading GP told The Independent on Sunday that the time had come for the general public to take responsibility. "The change needs to come in patient expectation. We need public education: that not every ill needs a pill," said Dr Peter Swinyard, chairman of the Family Doctor Association.

"We try hard not to prescribe, but it's difficult in practice. The patient will be dissatisfied with your consultation, and is likely to vote with their feet, register somewhere else or go to the walk-in centre and get antibiotics from the nurse.

"But if we go into a post-antibiotic phase, we may find that people with pneumonia will not be treatable with an antibiotic, and will die, whereas at the moment they would live.

"People need to realise the link. If you treat little Johnny's ear infection with antibiotics, his mummy may end up dying of pneumonia. It's stark and it's, of course, not direct, but on a population-wide level, that's the kind of link we're talking about."

Japan took a major step back on Friday from earlier pledges to slash its greenhouse gas emissions, saying a shutdown of its nuclear power plants in the wake of the Fukushima disaster had made previous targets unattainable. The announcement cast a shadow over international talks underway in Warsaw aimed at fashioning a new global pact to address the threats of a changing climate. Under its new goal, Japan, one of the world's top polluters, would still seek to reduce its current emissions. But it would release 3 percent more greenhouse gases in 2020 than it did in 1990, rather than the 6 percent cut it originally promised or the 25 percent reduction it promised two years before the 2011 nuclear disaster.

Visitors learn about energy and water conservation as they climb outdoor staircases that lead from the forest floor to the 125-foot-high rooftop rising above the leaf canopy. Photo by Joe Fletcher.

In 2013, the Boy Scouts of America made conservation a stronger focus of the organization by introducing a new sustainability merit badge and opening an educational center in the 10,600-acre Summit Bechtel Reserve in West Virginia. ... "The experience of moving through the trees was more powerful than we imagined," he says.

Nov 16, 2013

Google just announced it is investing another $80 million in six new solar power plants in California and Arizona, bringing its total investment in renewable energy to more than $1 billion. The new plants are expected to generate 160MW of electricity, enough to power 17,000 typical U.S. homes. They are expected to be operational by early 2014. With the new plants, Google's renewable power facilities will be able to generate a total of 2 billion watts (gigawatts) of energy, enough to power 500,000 homes or all of the public elementary schools in New York, Oregon, and Wyoming for one year, it said. Currently, Google gets about 20% of its power from renewable energy, but it has set a goal of achieving 100% renewable energy.

One year ago this month, the U.S. Department of Energy announced a $120 million plan to develop a technology capable of radically extending battery life. 'We want to change the game, basically,' said George Crabtree, a senior scientist at Argonne National Laboratory and a physics professor who is leading the effort. The goal is to develop a battery that can deliver five times the performance, measured in energy density, that's also five times cheaper, and do it in five years. They are looking at three research areas. Researchers are considering replacing the lithium with magnesium that has two charges, or aluminum, which has three charges. Another approach investigates replacing the intercalation step with a true chemical reaction. A third approach is the use of liquids to replace crystalline anodes and cathodes, which opens up more space for working ions.

NYTimes.com: Americans spend an estimated $5 billion a year on unproven herbal supplements that promise everything from fighting off colds to curbing hot flashes and boosting memory. But now there is a new reason for supplement buyers to beware: DNA tests show that many pills labeled as healing herbs are little more than powdered rice and weeds.

Using a test called DNA barcoding, a kind of genetic fingerprinting that has also been used to help uncover labeling fraud in the commercial seafood industry, Canadian researchers tested 44 bottles of popular supplements sold by 12 companies. They found that many were not what they claimed to be, and that pills labeled as popular herbs were often diluted — or replaced entirely — by cheap fillers like soybean, wheat and rice.

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Optimism and an open mind are the most radical political acts there
are.

We have thousands of energy options that can save our economy and planet without
sacrificing our resources or lifestyles.

The general public only hears of the few options that line the pockets of the
few that result in the suffering of the many.

The public information on this website makes it easy for anyone to clearly
understand how viable and abundant our future can really be.

We are not activists,
treehuggers or politicians...
we are EHS
professionals who have thoroughly enjoyed everything this planet and its people
have offered us and want to extend the quality of life for both.

NOTE: I post articles because I think they are of interest. Doing so doesn’t mean that I necessarily agree with every—or any—opinion in the posted article.
And although I often blog about disagreements, it is
VERY important to understand that I agreed more with the ideas of
President Obama and Dr. Chu than disagreed. (it is just part of
democracy, it gives balance and is vital)

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Getting up every morning before 4am... the only thing that looks good is
coffee.

I do not think President Obama regularly drank coffee we he was in senate,

but he may want to try it on his new job.

WARNING: coffee is harmful to the
environment, small woodland animals and people who like to maintain status quo

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particular order. The best one would be EHS News
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